Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Community quilt #41 was a very busy ‘I spy’ (or ‘eye spy’) quilt. An I Spy Quilt is made from fussy-cut fabrics, usually children’s prints and novelty fabrics with motifs that the recipient can ‘spy’ when looking at the quilt.

This one had everything from kittens to spiders, pegs to lemons, and everything in between! It was very ‘busy’ visually, and had every colour under the rainbow in it. The fussy cut pieces were hexagons, and most were on a pale blue or pale yellow background fabric. These blocks were separated by other novelty fabric blocks, and the whole top was bordered with a plain navy fabric.

How to quilt such a busy quilt? I thought of doing outline stitching around the motifs as I did for the lolly jar quilt, but I decided against this fairly quickly after examining some of the motifs more closely. I thought of the open headband motif — quick, easy; or a large all-over stipple. Then I decided to do a variation of the open headband motif — instead of points at each turn, I decided to square them off, giving a geometric look to the quilting.

As there were so many colours in this quilt, I used a pastel variegated thread to blend in with many of the fabrics. I also extended the stitching into the border as I didn’t want yet another different motif to draw the eye — there was already enough going on in this quilt!

(Click a photo to view it larger)

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Harmony in variegated pastel pinks, yellows and blues (cotton; 40 wt; colour ‘Spring’ 14062)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70 wt)

This pretty quilt didn’t take too long to quilt. It was a lap size quilt for starters. And I did very simple quilting on it, using long arcs to make the flower ‘petals’.

As all the fabrics were florals, I decided to quilt large flower shapes. To quilt from the centre out to the corners would’ve have taken too long, so instead from the point at one edge and did long sweeping up and down arcs crossing in the centre of each diamond and at the points. The effect is of large intersecting circles (‘cathedral windows’), or if you can’t see those (the back shows them better), then just flower petals 😉

Click on a photo to view it larger.

Threads used:

• Top: Guterman Sulky in a soft variegated pink for the lighter diamonds (rayon, 40 wt; colour 2100); Superior King Tut variegated purple, blue, green and yellow for the darker diamonds (Egyptian cotton, colour ‘Cairo’ #932)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (80 wt; colour DB 115)

Another blue and cream quilt… Pinwheels this time.

Some of the fabrics had water, fish, water lilies, or water birds in them, so instead of following any of the very geometric shapes of the pinwheels, I went for something quite different — water! I used a pretty pale blue to mid blue variegated thread and I think it worked well for this all-over design. I like how it gives a ‘modern quilt’ feel to this traditional pinwheel pattern.

I timed this one properly and also reset the stitch counter on my Sweet Sixteen — the quilting took 3 hours and some 80,000 stitches.

Click on a photo to view it larger.

The back:

Threads used:

• Top: Wonderfil Tutti (Egyptian cotton, 50 wt; colour TU 21)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70wt)

This was a big quilt, with well over 120 appliqued butterflies arranged in circles in each block. How to quilt it?

Click on a photo to view it larger.

Well, I wanted to make the butterflies ‘pop’, so I decided to do a small stipple around them, but I didn’t want the stipple to take over, so I grabbed a large bowl from the kitchen and marked a big circle. I figured I’d do something in the circle later…

After quilting around all the butterflies in all the blocks, I now had an empty circle in the middle. Well, that looked odd, so I thought maybe I could stitch a butterfly in the centre of each circle, but I needed the central butterfly to ‘pop’ too, so I went with a smaller inner circle (another kitchen bowl), then the butterfly in blue, with blue and pink in the wings (there was some pink in some of the blue fabrics), followed by more stippling around each butterfly to make it stand out.

About the centre butterfly: I could have hunted through all my books, magazines, tear-out templates from magazines etc. for a suitable butterfly outline, but I could have spent hours doing that and still not find the outline I wanted. So off to Google! I searched for butterfly outline then clicked on the Google Images link. Once I found the shape I wanted, I printed it out at the correct percentage to fit my centre (yes, I had to try a couple of % settings first!). Then I put the printout under a sheet of stiff plastic (the sort used as the outer cover of spiral- or coil-bound business reports), and marked the outline with a thin Sharpie. Then I cut out the plastic template and used a marker to go around this template in the centres. I stitched around each outline in blue, then did a very free motion design inside the wings in the same blue as well as the little banana-shaped stitches up and down the body, followed by the antenna also in the same blue. Once I’d done that, I added some free motion pink curlicues inside the free-motioned blue wing shapes. No patterns for any of that inside the butterfly — just from my head.

As all the blue sashing fabrics had a leaf motif, I stitches leaves in the sashing strips in the same blue thread as the centre butterflies.

I think it took about 8 to 12 hours to quilt this large quilt  — I did it over two days.

The back:

Threads used:

• Top: Fil-Tec Glide (‘Cream’, colour 20001; 40 wt polyester); Floriani (blue, colour PF373; 40 wt rayon (?)); Robison-Anton (‘Pale orchid’ [pink], colour 2423; 40wt rayon)
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white, 70wt)

The last of the small quilts in the latest batch was a very pretty ‘stained glass’ style quilt in Asian fabrics. Each fabric was quite different so how to quilt it? I thought of doing something different in each block, but figured that might make it too busy (the fabric is busy enough), and I thought of doing a water motif. But eventually I decided on a spiky grass motif in a gold coloured thread (not metallic). I repeated the same grass in each block and used a smaller version of it in the border.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

In the border I also used the technique I learned in the December FMQ Challenge of making the centre and corner elements ‘kiss’ each other.

Threads used:

• Top: Robison-Anton rayon (color 2332 ‘Penny’; 40 wt)
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (DB 115, 80wt)

The next small quilt in the most recent batch was another child’s quilt.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

I looked at the fabric for a hint as to how to quilt it, and found it in the balloons. I hunted out some ancient variegated overlocker thread I had in bright primary colours (plus green) and used that to stitch a big balloon in each block. I didn’t mark the balloons — just stitched them from the end of a tail, up to the balloon, around in a sort of circle, then stitched a small triangle for the knot/mouthpiece, and came back down for another tail. Pretty easy, really.

The fabric also had balls in it, so I did large bubbles in the green borders and sashing emulating the roundness of the balls, again, in the same overlocker thread. Then I stitched one HUGE balloon over the entire quilt in the last of my ‘glow in the dark’ thread. Hopefully, the child who receives this quilt will see it at night 😉

Threads used:

• Top: Variegated overlocker thread I’ve had for years!
• Bobbin: Bobbinfil (white; 70 wt)

My new batch of quilts arrived with the lovely Lisa a week ago! I completed the three smaller ones last weekend but have only just got around to taking the photos and writing blog posts about them.

First was a pretty teddy bear quilt. I wanted to make the hand-embroidered bears ‘pop’ (those blocks had double batting behind them, like trapunto), so I knew that tight/dense stitching around the bears would do that. I also stitched around the main bear shapes to make them pop even more. The bears were the most important element, so I used a cotton thread that blended in with the cream (calico?) background. And I decided to use MacTavishing as the tight stitch.

(Click on a photo to view it larger.)

After doing the bear blocks, the coloured borders of each block were too puffy, so my next decision was how to stitch them in a way that flattened them but with a stitch that a child might enjoy. I decided on big bubbles, in matching threads for each block (I didn’t want the bubbles to stand out too much).

My next decision was what to do with the empty cream blocks (setting squares) in the middle and on the outer edges. For the outer edges, I went with MacTavishing again, and for the inner blocks, I found an outline of a teddy bear on the internet, printed it out, cut it out as a temporary template, centred it and stitched around it, then added MacTavishing to make the outline ‘pop’. The final thing I added was another row of outline stitching around these two bears — in a ‘glow in the dark’ thread! Hopefully, it will show at night and the child who receives this quilt will get great delight in seeing the glowing outlines of the two little bears 😉

The back:

Threads used:

• Top: Superior King Tut ‘Papyrus’, plus various coloured threads to match the borders of each block
• Bobbin: Wonderfil Deco-Bob (colour DB 115; 80 wt)